


How Group Work Gets Done

by embarrassing old stuff from LJ pre-2015 (prevaricator)



Category: NewS (Band)
Genre: Gen, RPS - Freeform, the author's (not very positive) opinion on the DVD cover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-10-04
Updated: 2009-10-04
Packaged: 2018-10-15 12:05:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10556036
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prevaricator/pseuds/embarrassing%20old%20stuff%20from%20LJ%20pre-2015
Summary: How the NEWS Live Diamond DVD cover came to be.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Repost from LJ

**How Group Work Gets Done**  
PG-13(for a cussword), Gen, 1102 words  
Warning: RPS, the author's (not very positive) opinion on the DVD cover  
Summary: How the NEWS Live Diamond DVD cover came to be.

A/N: Probably doesn't make sense if you haven't seen the DVD cover yet. I blame this fic on certain friends of mine, who decided that the cover looks like someone in NEWS designed it.

  
“We’ve decided that NEWS should design the cover for the DVD. Please come up with something by Monday.”

With that, the manager turned and left.

“Well, that was a short meeting! Who wants to go get some lunch?” Ryo was pleasantly surprised at the prospect of actually having time to eat.

“Ooh, lunch!” Tegoshi said.

Koyama looked happy, “That sounds good! We can talk about the design over lunch.”

Yamapi was up for it (even offered to treat), and Massu never declined food. Shige’s stomach growled in his sleep, which they decided was an affirmative answer.

 

 

Unfortunately, NEWS hadn’t all been together since 24 hour TV, and spent most of lunch catching up with each other and trying to see if Shige could fit an entire meat bun in his mouth (he could, but he could barely eat for the next few days due to a horribly burnt mouth. Ryo called it “helping with his diet”).

After an hour of not discussing the DVD cover at all, Ryo looked at his watch and cursed. “I have a photo shoot with Kanjani in ten minutes!” he yelled.

“But we haven’t talked about the DVD cover at all yet!” Koyama fretted.

“Shit, I have recording soon, too,” Yamapi said. “Why don’t we all just come up with stuff on our own and have a meeting to go over it later?”

Everyone agreed.

 

 

Shige had an idea for his (mostly an excuse to use his new darkroom), but he didn’t get a chance to work on it until the wee hours of Sunday morning, after a long Saturday of fishing with Ohno.

He put his negative into his enlarger, focused the image, made a test strip, picked the best exposure time and contrast filter, and made a print. He watched his timer ever so carefully as he put the paper into the developer, stop bath, and fixer. By the time it was fixed, he could barely keep his eyes open. He put the photo in the water to rinse, and set the alarm on his cell phone for ten minutes just in case.

Ten minutes later, he woke to a funny buzzing feeling in his skull. He’d fallen asleep with his forehead on his phone.

He hung the print to dry, then collapsed into bed.

 

 

He barely awoke in time for the scheduled meeting at noon, foregoing a meal and barely remembering to take his print with him as he left.

Everyone but Yamapi was already there when he walked into their scheduled meeting place. Somehow “everyone” managed to include Uchi.

Shige opened his mouth to ask _why_ Uchi was there, but he decided that someone would probably decide Shige was mean and didn’t want to include Uchi (which was not true at all. At least, as long as the DVD cover didn’t end up entirely pink and sparkly).

Thankfully, Massu interrupted him to say, “Shige, you have to look at the design Tegoshi and I made! It’s really great!”

And with that, he brandished what looked to Shige like the sort of thing one would expect to see from a student on the second day of a junior high school computer graphics class. There appeared to be a very shiny diamond blasting off into outer space. The text was large and orange, with the color fading to yellow on the bottom. There was an astronaut.

He looked up. Massu and Tegoshi were looking at him with big, hopeful eyes. “It’s. Um. Interesting,” he stammered.

“The text was my idea!” Massu said proudly.

Shige had had a hunch.

He settled in at the table to look at the others’ designs. Koyama’s was a skull and crossbones, but the skull was shaped like a diamond. He’d misspelled both “live” and “diamond.” Ryo’s was just silver text on a black background, with no excess decoration. Uchi said he’d helped Koyama with his design. Shige figured that was probably why it was a _pink_ skull and crossbones.

“So, what did Shige make?” Koyama asked.

Shige pulled a folder out of his bag and flipped it open. And stared.

Just then, Yamapi walked in, looking sheepish. “I’m sorry, I didn’t have time to come up with anything!”

He paused to look over Shige’s shoulder. “Wow, Shige. That’s really cool looking! Are you learning Russian or something?”

Shige was not, in fact, learning a new language. He vaguely wondered how Yamapi had managed to graduate from college without being able to recognize Roman lettering when it was backwards.

Still, the backwards bit was a bit of a problem, though easily fixed. The large dark strip, however, looked suspiciously like a gash in the negative. That was not so easily fixed.

He flipped the paper back into his folder before anyone else could see it, and told them it was irreparable.

In the end, he decided it was worth it just to see Massu’s smile when he and Tegoshi inevitably won, even if they did win more because of pouting and lack of competition than because their design was any good.

 

 

On Monday, their manager approved the design for much the same reason as they had. “Well, the fans will be happy,” he rationalized.

 

 

A while later, Shige’s j-web read as follows:

_Recently, NEWS was assigned to design the cover for their live DVD._

As they were all very busy with individual activities, they decided to each come up with ideas on their own, then pick the best one.

Kato Shigeaki had an idea. He would take a photo.

He worked very hard setting up his picture.

He decided to put text on something in the picture, rather than add it in later.

Then Kato Shigeaki had plans to go fishing with Ohno-sempai, so he could not print his photo until the night before he had to show it to the rest of NEWS.

Kato Shigeaki was very careful making his print.

He had the chemicals in the proper order.

He focused his enlarger.

Even though he was really tired, he remembered to clip all sides of his print when he hung it to dry, so it wouldn’t curl up.

The next day, Kato Shigeaki went to show his print to NEWS, but just then he realized.

His print was backwards. The text was unreadable!

Even worse, there was a bad scratch on his negative.

Totally unuseable.

The design that was chosen was created by Tegomasu.

By the way, when Tegomasu showed the design, Massu said it was great.

Why does he say that about things he made himself?

Massu, please let other people judge your work. Don’t do it yourself.

 

*Please tell me if I've made any grammatical errors/html fails, so I can fix them?


End file.
